By Josh Hall (Twitter: @Vancan19)

Red Deer rinks well-prepared to avoid ammonia emergencies: City

Mar 21, 2018 | 4:16 PM

Five months since three arena workers were tragically killed in southeastern B.C., actions are being taken by communities across Canada to prevent the same thing from happening again.

On October 17, two workers with the City of Fernie and a Calgary-based employee with CIMCO Refrigeration perished during an ammonia leak at the local rink.

It was mere weeks later that Alberta’s head of Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) notified communities across the province, including Red Deer, of additional inspections. Normally, sites will be spot-inspected at random, much like how restaurants are inspected by the CFIA.

The City of Red Deer has five public rinks which use ammonia in their refrigerant system – the Kinsmen Arena (two sheets of ice), the Kinex, Servus Arena, G.H. Dawe Arena and the Collicutt Centre. The Enmax Centrium and the new Gary W. Harris Canada Games Centre at RDC also have ammonia systems installed. Since October, OHS has inspected three of The City’s properties.

Barb McKee, Recreation Superintendent with The City of Red Deer, says immediate action was taken following the Fernie tragedy.

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“Ammonia certainly is an area where we’ve identified risk. We were able to go back to our current practices around staff training, our safe work procedures, our relationship with our ammonia contractor and just be sure we had everything in place to safeguard the health and wellbeing of our staff,” she says.

“It’s a very small industry when you get to recreation facility management. There were people within Red Deer who knew some of the fellows who were involved in the Fernie incident, so it hits home and our leadership certainly took it seriously and had a good hard look inside.”

In January, an external ammonia leak occurred at the Kinex Arena in downtown Red Deer. Emergency protocol was activated and a hockey team was evacuated from the building as a precaution, though there was never any danger to the public, McKee says.

She notes ammonia systems, including the one at the brand new Servus Arena, are widely used and come with many safeguards.

“Safety is The City’s first priority and there are significant resources put behind ensuring our staff returns home safely at night,” McKee says. “It is about ensuring our emergency response planning is in place, our workers are trained properly, that we respect and respond to deficiencies internally regularly, and that staff feel they have every ability to highlight any concerns they have.”

A story from The Canadian Press points out the Fernie Memorial Arena was inspected six times between Sept. 2007 and Oct. 2017. Technical Safety B.C. says they were advised that all issues identified in the most recent inspection had been addressed.

Annual inspections of B.C. facilities haven’t been required since that province’s Safety Standards Act was enacted in 2003.

The investigation into last fall’s tragic incident in Fernie continues.
 

(with files from The Canadian Press)

Related: Inspections, training needed to prevent ammonia leaks at ice rinks: experts

               A list of ammonia leaks at arenas in Canada

               A list of ammonia rink regulations across Canada